Gordon Elliott, Ireland's famous trainer of champions, was photographed sitting on a dead horse and now they won't let him into Britain. Elliott has apologized, stating that he was standing by the dead horse when he got a phone call and sat down to take the call without thinking: "a moment of madness that I am going to have to spend the rest of my life paying for and that my staff are suffering for."
Elliott, 43, has apologised after the photograph circulated on social media. The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board (IHRB) has started an investigation and the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) has banned him until it is completed.
"It is an interim decision which the BHA regards as proportionate in these circumstances," it said.
A cropped version is embedded above. The original photo in question [JPG] shows the rest of the obviously dead horse and Elliott's pose upon it. It doesn't really suggest the absent-minded scenario he describes, to my mind, but photos can be deceptive.
